HARVEY: Today's game was a victory of faith, and now the lower teams are much stronger

Tiger Poker 06 January 2019 Spain Copa del Rey 1/16 final, Barcelona beat Linares Sport 2-1 away. Barca coach Xavi attended the press conference after the game.

At the beginning of today's game you used a three-back formation, Alves played as a full-back, Alba was on the left, but at the end you changed the formation to 4-3-3, here's why:

It's a tactical issue, because the 3-4-3 formation is very risky, it is easy to be used in terms of offensive and defensive conversions, and our loss of the ball is a cross from the opponent, caused by our lack of concentration at the centre-back. Then our intention was to have possession, we wanted to have the upper hand and protect both sides, and when we were ahead, playing 3-4-3 was taking an unnecessary risk. So I changed the formation to 4-3-3.

What you learned from this game:

If we are stronger than our opponents, then there will be two possibilities in the end, first, we may have a hot head and then a stupid red card; second, we may let our guard down because we feel that we are the stronger side. But it's a knockout, one mistake can get you out, we can't get out of the Copa del Rey, so it's a victory of faith. At first we were a little confident, but then we corrected the mistake in time.

In a post-match interview, Ugra said that at halftime you made things very clear and what message you conveyed to the players:

I said to them, 'I can tell you about the tactics for three hours, but what I want is a victory of faith, we need to do better than the opponent, we need to go further.' We are obviously better than Linares, but now we are going to be eliminated for this score, we need to have faith'.

I do feel that the second half was a victory of faith. We played better than our opponents in some cases, which is normal because the opponent is only Linares after all, but we are really doing well.

What do you think of Dembele's performance in this game, he just recovered from the new crown, scored a goal, and now he has not renewed his contract, I wonder if you have a chance to talk to him after the game:

We just talked about the football level, we needed him, and he did what he asked for, and decided the game. Today he could even score one more to extend the score to 3-1. I'm happy with him and I don't have anything special to say about him on a football level. He came out, worked hard, and became a winner. He's also great in one-on-one. As for the renewal of the contract, there is nothing new.

How important is today's game in maintaining the team's momentum and fan confidence? This game can be said that there are not many things you can win, but there are many things that you can lose:

To be exactly right, it's a very difficult day because everyone may be expecting us to win against our opponents, but football has long since ceased to be like this.

It's hard to win, and it's hard to attack an organized team, no matter what level they come from. It's not just us, a lot of La Liga teams are having a tough time against the lower divisions and all the teams are improving.

We have to take advantage of the good momentum we have now, and now we have to focus on the league against Granada on Saturday.